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Creative Commons

Assistant Director Shaun Spalding and New Media Rights Fellow Erika Lee will discuss the basics of intellectual property at the KPBS Explore Local Content Project Orientation on Wednesday December 13 at 6pm!

Ever wonder what sorts of issues you may encounter as a creator or entrepreneur, and when you might want to reach out to a real life lawyer? That’s what our book "Don't Panic: A Legal Guide (in plain english) for Small Businesses and Creative Professionals" is all about. This book is designed to help you through the legal issues you may run into as a creator, entrepreneur, or innovator. We focus on issues you may encounter from the inception of your business to the moment (that hopefully doesn’t happen) you get a nasty lawyer letter for the first time. While this book is not a substitute for legal advice, it can serve as a helpful guide to preventing and resolving legal issues.

How does copyright protect your work, how does it protect the work of others? When do you need permission, and when can you reuse a photo, video, or audio clip without permission? We’ll answer these questions and also leave plenty of time for Q&A.

Let's play videos are more popular than ever, however, for many creators what's legally okay and what isn't is more unclear than ever. Come learn the basics of copyright and trademark law that you need to know to keep your videos and streams up. Also get a chance to hear from legal experts and video creators about hot topics like Easter Egg Videos, Esports and using in-game music.

Joining Art and Teri will be Wikimedia Legal Counsel and lifelong gamer Jacob Rogers, as well as Angelo Alcid attorney and writer of the Journal of Geek Law.

So if you'll be at SXSW come check it out! Don't have a badge? No worries! SXSW gaming is open to the public so if you happen to be in Austin and are willing to brave the SXSW crowds come on by! If you can’t make it, you can follow our panel on twitter using #NMR.

As we've written about before there's a major justice gap when it comes to creators and entrepreneurs having access to critical legal services. While we do our best to provide free and low cost legal services, we’re only one organization. That's why we’ve created a national list of law school legal clinics as a resource to creators, entrepreneurs and even other lawyers to help find other legal clinics fighting to fill the justice gap. The clinics on the list typically provide completely free or low cost services depending on if you qualify and they have the capacity to take on new issues. Check out the complete list here.

You may have heard about our fair use app…we hear its kind of a thing now. This summer California Western School of Law did a featured front page story all about our app and our amazing student interns who helped us create it. You can check it out over on the CWSL site here.

Are you a student at California Western School of Law passionate about helping artists, entrepreneurs and internet users with legal issues brought about by the digital age? This spring we will once again be offering an opportunity to be a part of our clinic class, check out our intern page for more details on how to apply. Applications open September 9th and close October 9th.

Today, New Media Rights along with a broad coalition of more than 90 education, library, technology, public interest, and legal organizations, called on the White House to take action to ensure federally funded educational materials are made available as Open Educational Resources (OER) that are free to use, share, and improve!

On this page of the Citizen's Guide to Creative Commons, we'll go over the most basic features shared by all Creative Commons licenses, and cover the responsibilities and privileges given to those using CC licensed work!.

Let's choose a Creative Commons license! Here, we'll cover the different licenses you can choose, the various requirements you can set with your license, and we'll show you how to put your work in the public domain.

In our new book, we focus on issues you may encounter from the inception of your business to the moment (that hopefully doesn’t happen) you get a nasty lawyer letter for the first time.

You’ll learn how to form your business, protect your intellectual property, and avoid problems when launching your project. Taking a few simple steps upfront to protect your business or project can save time and money down the road. Don't Panic has also been used in undergraduate & graduate classes nationwide to teach business and legal concepts to non-lawyers. Professors can request a FREE evaluation copy

FINALLY, CLEAR ANSWERS FOR LEGAL AND BUSINESS QUESTIONS WRITTEN BY LAWYERS AND DESIGNED FOR CREATIVES

After 10 years of advising creators and entrepreneurs, we’ve kept hearing about the same unsolved issue from our clients...

Creatives want to learn the legal and business rules they need to grow and protect their businesses. BUT they don’t have the resources to purchase 10 different books, read 100 different conflicting blog posts written by non-lawyers, and then spend $1,000 hiring an expensive lawyer to summarize them all before they’re understandable and usable.

That’s why we‘ve created our Resource Library. These checklists, best practice guides, and videos are made specifically for creative entrepreneurs who want the right strategies -- laid out in the right order -- to legally protect and thoughtfully grow their businesses.

We realized there needs to be an affordable and accurate place to find best practice guides written by lawyers but designed to be implemented by creators.

We are supporting the Library with ongoing updates -- which means you get new, actionable content for as long as you remain a member.

You can directly suggest new additions for the topics we’ll add. YOU as members, dictate what is added to the library based on what YOU need the most.

SIGN UP TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP IN YOUR PROJECT, AND YOU'LL GET A GIFT WHEN WE LAUNCH...